Wednesday, February 21, 2007

FULL SAIL JOINS THE DOUBLE IPA WARS

Looks like FULL SAIL, the venerable Oregon brewery long known for their well-distributed Pale Ale and Amber beers, is joining Double IPA mania with their new SLIPKNOT double IPA. I had some on tap the other day and was pretty impressed. Not sure what you think about Full Sail but I’ve kinda always lumped them toward the bottom half of bottled microbrews; their stuff is all very serviceable but never all that notable. This one’s different. Slipknot is really “bold”, a front-forward, quite hoppy (and at times bitter) IPA yet missing some of the sweetness you’ll find in IPAs we love like Ballast Point’s or Stone’s. It’s not something you’d probably want to pound one after the other, if you know what I mean – a good one for drinking in a pint, at a bar, and then experimenting somewhere else. I like it. 7.5/10.